Odette Kelada for ‘Drawing Sybilla’, an ‘intriguing narrative of five interconnected stories woven together through the poetic figure of a muse, to imagine ‘storylines’ of twentieth century Australian women writers’.

Karen Han Throssell for ‘The Man Who Wasn’t There’, a memoir ‘in defence of the political vilification of her father by the granddaughter of Katharine Susannah Prichard’.

Carolyn Abbs for ‘The Tiny Museums’, a volume of poems that ‘mines the spaces between deep time and now; between geographies, forms of expression, and a range of doublings and mirrors’.

Rachael Mead, for ‘The Flaw in the Pattern’, a volume of poems ‘capturing the legacy of the strong bonds between writing and walking; building an ever-present sense of encountering place through a powerfully alive embodiment.

Christopher Hill, for ‘The Savage Club’, a novel that ‘ambitiously takes on anthropology, fieldwork and massacres in the East Kimberley region of Western Australia in 1926 and then time-travels to a political speech delivered in a Redfern park in 1992’.

The award, now in its second year, attracted 85 entries of fiction, nonfiction and poetry. The judging panel comprised poet Lucy Dougan, critic James Ley, and UWA Publishing director Terri-ann White.

The winner, who will be announced at a ceremony as part of the 2017 Perth Writers Festival, receives $10,000 and a publishing contract with UWA Publishing. The award is funded by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund. Josephine Wilson won the award last year for her novel Extinctions.